Cabin In The Woods
by ColorOfAngels
Summary: A long weekend getaway to get out of the city and unplug from the world for awhile, becomes a little longer than expected when the storm of the century rolls through. Established Bucky x Darcy x Steve relationship. But could be read however you like. Just a bit of Christmas fluff and fun.
1. Day 1

A/N Yay fluffy Christmas fic! I'll be honest there's not going to be a whole lot of plot in this one, I just wanted to write some fun and fluffy vignettes of our favorite trio :) Also this was supposed to be up yesterday (my plan is to post chapters in real time to the story) but my internet decided to give up the ghost for most of the evening so lets all just pretend it's the 12th today... Also this is unbetaed so let me know if there is any horrific cringe worth mistakes/typos :)

* * *

Bucky's head popped through the gap between the front seats. "Are we there yet?"

"Do you see a cabin?" Darcy asked shortly. It had been a long drive upstate and she was getting a headache from the glare coming off the freshly fallen snow.

"No."

"Then we're not there yet." Without taking her eyes off the road, she reached over her shoulder and pressed his head back. "So sit your ass down and put your seatbelt back on."

"I'm hungry and we've been going two miles per hour down a deserted dirt road for the past hour and haven't seen another car since we turned off the main road. We're not going to have an accident and Bambi isn't going to give us a ticket so I think I'll be okay without my seatbelt on, Dollface," Bucky returned. It had been a point of contention between the two of them for months, Bucky not feeling that modern safety laws should apply to him and Darcy being of the click it or ticket generation.

"I'm going 30 which is as fast as I'm allowed to go with chains on the tires, which we stopped to put on as soon as we turned onto the_ private,_ not abandoned, road twenty minutes ago. And if you don't put your seatbelt back on I will stop this car and we'll all just sit here and stare at each other and then you'll never get lunch."

"She'll do it," Steve interjected, not looking up from the map that he'd pulled out of the glove box after the GPS lost signal a few miles back.

The car was already decelerating when Bucky sighed audibly which preceded the sound of the clicking of his belt.

"Why did we bring him again?" Darcy asked looking sidelong at Steve.

"Because last time we left him home alone unsupervised for more than a day we came home to find trash strewn all over the apartment and the curtains pulled off the wall," Steve answered calmly.

"You think you're funny punk?" Bucky reached between the seats and flicked the back of Steve's ear, who did think he was funny and chuckled lowly despite the fact that his ear was rapidly turning bright red. "And I told you not to believe a thing out of Natasha's mouth. The curtains were _not_ my fault," he added with a petulant grumble.

Darcy and Steve traded a covert sidelong glance, but both managed to refrain from commenting.

"Bucky does have a point," Steve said instead, changing the subject as he peered at the map. "This place is pretty far off the beaten path. How did you even find it?"

"One of Coulson's team told me about it the last time they were in town," she answered vaguely.

"The hacker?" Bucky asked, knowing the two women had bonded over their adventures in breaking through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s firewalls.

"No, her SO," Darcy admitted with a cringe, knowing how well that news was going to go over.

"Ward?!" Bucky exclaimed. "Special Agent Grant Ward is your source for your romantic weekend getaway spot?"

"Why do you have to say it like that?" Darcy shot back.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Bucky replied with a question of his own. "I hate that guy."

"I know, which is why I didn't tell you. And Grant is a perfectly nice guy."

"So he's _Grant_ now?" Bucky scoffed.

Darcy rolled her eyes. "Agent Ward is a perfectly nice guy. You just don't like him because you embarrassed yourself the first time you met him because you tried to talk shit with Natasha in front of him and you didn't know he speaks Russian. Which was a total rookie move b-t-dubs."

"It was sloppy," Steve couldn't help but agree, throwing an amused glance over his shoulder at their bickering. He was always ready to jump in and play peacemaker if one of them was about to take it too far, but he knew how much they both enjoyed their verbal sparring matches.

"He speaks _terrible_ Russian," Bucky felt the need to point out, as if that somehow meant it didn't count. "And that's not why I don't like him. He's a smug asshole, that's why I don't like him."

"_You're_ a smug asshole," Darcy countered, meeting Bucky's gaze in the rearview mirror.

"I know, but for me it's part of my charm. He's just an asshole," Bucky retorted. "Back me up Punk."

"It's true," Steve agreed as he admitted defeat and started refolding the map, it wasn't going to help him find their destination if it wasn't on the map to begin with. "Buck's not nearly as charming when he's not being smug and/or an asshole."

Bucky punched the back of his chair hard enough that something deep in the seat groaned and Steve's seatbelt locked.

"Hey now, this is a rental!" Darcy said sharply.

Steve, however, just laughed as he unbuckled his seat belt and readjusted it so that it wasn't choking him. "Yes, Ward is smug, but most Agents are when they get to a certain level. I think you have to be to do the sorts of things we do on a daily basis," he mused, knowing that he too, had his moments. "But I didn't think he was an asshole."

"You only think that because he was sucking up to his boss's favorite superhero," Bucky countered.

Darcy didn't really think that Ward was the kind to worry about brownie points, but only rolled her eyes because they had finally arrived. "And we're here!"

Steve and Bucky both fell silent as they took in the log cabin nestled deep in the woods. Bucky of course was the first to break the silence.

"Is this an old abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house?" he asked incredulously.

"I think the term Grant used was private," Darcy replied, looking at the cabin a bit dubiously herself.

"Special Agent Smug Asshole sent us to a dilapidated shack in the woods. Fantastic."

"It's not dilapidated," Steve said slowly, trying to stay positive. "It's rustic."

"Right, it's got a sort of vintage charm to it," Darcy agreed with Steve verbally, while mentally thinking that Bucky's description was more accurate.

The three of them fell back into silence for several long beats, all of them evaluating the structure in front of them that was supposed to be their home for the next three and a half days.

"Welp, it's going to get dark soon, so we should probably get inside and unpack the car before it gets any colder," Steve finally said.

Darcy raised a single eyebrow in Steve's direction, it was still early afternoon and they had several hours yet before sunset, but she started moving, zipping up her coat, pulling on her gloves and rewrapping her scarf around her neck in anticipation of getting out of the car which was his intention so it didn't really matter.

Walking around to the back of the rented SUV, Darcy popped the hatchback and started pulling out the coolers of groceries that contained their lunch, figuring that if it really was as bad on the inside as it looked on the outside they could at least have lunch before she had to listen to Bucky congratulate himself about how right he was about Grant all the way back down the mountain. Being the gentleman they were both Steve and Bucky wordlessly took a cooler from her hands, leaving her to lead the way towards the cabin.

Clumsy with her thick woolen gloves on, it took her a few minutes to first fish the key out of her coat pocket, and several more to struggle with the lock. Finally she managed to get the tumblers to click and pushed the door open, the stiff and squeaky hinges protesting loudly. Taking a step inside the dark cabin, the drawn curtains not allowing any of the winter sun inside, she took a deep breath of stale air while she looked for a light switch and braced herself for the worst.

"Oh," was all she could say when lights sprang on around the room.

She realized that Bucky's first instinct was probably correct. That this cabin was, or perhaps still is a secluded S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house. Built to look uninviting on the outside, but actually quite cozy and rather homey on in the inside. Everything was oak and knotty pine, with overstuffed plaid sofas, and a colorful rag rug in front of a large fireplace. There didn't seem to be anything in the way of electronics, no TV or computer, she didn't even see a phone, just the lights that she assumed ran off a generator somewhere since they were most certainly off the grid. She had mentioned to Grant that she would love to get away with the guys and just unplug from the world for awhile, and it seemed that he had delivered perfectly. Turning around she looked up at her boys and grinned, her smile widening when she saw them grinning back down at her.

"All right," she said clapping her hands together. "Bucky can you find the thermostat and get the heater turned on and maybe start a fire while Steve and I find the kitchen and get lunch set up?" she requested since it was just as cold inside as it was outside with the cabin having been shut up and unoccupied for who knows how long.

"Anything for you sweetheart," Bucky said with a rakish grin. "And alright, I'll admit it," he paused for a half a beat before turning to do as she asked, "Ward isn't a _complete_ asshole."

* * *

A/N And there we have it, the scene is set so to speak... I feel the need to mention that I personally love Ward and any opinions voiced by James Buchanan Barnes are his and his alone :P Anyways... All the chapters are going to be about this long but there should be 6 of the before Christmas so hopefully that will make up for the length. Let me know what you think so far!


	2. Day 4

A/N And here we are again, a couple days later than I intended but better late than never right?

It's three in the morning and I literally just finished this, and just gave it a quick read through myself, so let me know if there are any glaring typos and I'll get that taken care of.

* * *

Steve woke with the sun.

It was a simple fact of life, whether he liked it or not. And there were many mornings that very firmly landed in the not category, but whether it was the serum or simply habit, it seemed like no matter what he did, he just did not posses the ability to sleep in. He inclined to believe that it was a bit of both, as Bucky had no problem functioning on as little sleep as he did when they were on a mission, easily staying awake and alert for days at a time, but he also had a tendency to sleep until noon if there was no pressing reason for him to awake at a certain time.

Of course, Steve thought, rolling over to glance at the clock on the wall, confirming that it was only a little after seven. Rising with the sun usually meant a bit more, well, sun.

Sliding out from beneath the covers, careful not to disturb anyone, he padded over to the window and pulled back the gauzy curtain. His jaw dropped at what he saw, or more accurately, at what he didn't see, which was anything. The woods had been replaced by a curtain of white, which seemed to be blowing sideways.

It only took him all of 3.2 seconds to realize that they would not be going home today.

Leaving the bedroom he padded barefoot into the kitchen, where he had recalled spotting an old radio on the top shelf of one of the cupboards, where they had left it, wholly ignored since their arrival. He started a pot of coffee to brew before sitting down at the table to fiddle with the dials in hope of finding a signal.

When he finally managed to get a news station that came through as only mostly static, instead of entirely static, none of the news that he was able to make out was good. It seemed that a storm cell that was supposed to move out to the ocean had unexpectedly decided to veer west, and another weather system that was predicted to travel through the Midwest and then up into Canada instead took a detour south and the two merged into a huge super storm the likes of which the north east had never seen in recent memory.

A pot and a half of coffee and several unhelpful news reports later, a bleary eyed Darcy shuffled into the kitchen. She wandered over to where Steve was sitting and wrapped her hands around his shoulders, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, clearly not quite yet prepared to face the day.

"I thought you were going to wake us up so we could get an early start," she mumbled against his skin.

"Didn't see the point," Steve replied, reaching over his shoulder to rake his fingers through her sleep tousled hair. "I thought I'd let you both sleep in."

Darcy hummed low in her throat, a sound Bucky often likened to the purring of a cat, as Steve's fingernails scratched against her scalp. "What are you talking about?" she asked almost back to sleep, even standing up. "I wanted to get back into the city before evening rush hour."

"Sweetheart, have you actually opened your eyes yet this morning?" Steve asked, an amused smile playing at the corners of his lips.

"Opening your eyes is over rated," she grumbled moodily.

"Well you might want to give it a shot and look out the window," he said with voice curiously void of emotion.

Steve's tone got her attention and Darcy forced herself to wake up enough to look up and out through the large bay window over the kitchen sink.

"Well, fuck."

"That was basically my first thought too," Steve agreed, pouring Darcy a cup of coffee without being asked, doctoring it the way she liked it.

"I thought the news said that it wasn't going to snow up here until the end of the week," she said as she crossed over to sink to get a better look at what was happening outside. Not that there was anything to see.

"Yeah well that was four days ago," Steve said watching her lean toward the window until her nose was almost touching the glass. "I'm getting the impression that maybe we shouldn't have stayed quite as unplugged as we did."

"You get anything useful from that thing?" Darcy asked, nodding at the radio on the table. She couldn't pick up anything comprehensible from the garbled static, but Steve had been listening pretty intently when she'd come into the kitchen.

"Just that we should have left yesterday, and that it doesn't look like this is going to blow over any time soon."

"Fan-frickin-tastic," Darcy signed as she rejoined Steve at the table and picked up the mug of coffee he had prepared for her.

"All right, which one of you assholes spent last night dreaming of a White Christmas?!"

"Bucky's awake," Steve announced needlessly.

"And he looked out the window," Darcy added.

Bucky came striding into the kitchen, pulling a t-shirt over his head as he walked. "I'm looking at you sweet cheeks."

"Me?! How is this my fault?" Darcy asked appalled.

"Steve and I have seen enough snow and ice to last several lifetimes," he said as he swiped the mug from her hand on his trek across the room before coming to a stop, leaning against the counter. "You're the one who get's excited when it starts to flurry."

"I grew up in New Mexico," she reminded him with a vengeful glare as she watched him sip from her abducted coffee. "Snow is still a novelty. That does not mean I want to be a member of Donnor Party of three!"

"I hardly think there will be any need to resort to cannibalism," Steve interjected dryly while he slid a fresh cup in front of Darcy, having anticipated Bucky's move. "This is a safe house and as such is very well provisioned, if not technologically cut off."

"There is that," Darcy agreed, with a sigh, thinking of the stockpile of non perishables in the pantry. "And I suppose I can think of worse places to be and with worse company to have to wait out a blizzard," she added smiling wealy at her boys, trying to look on the bright side. Because truly, even though she knew Bucky was only joking about her wishing a blizzard down on top them, she couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible what with this whole weekend getaway being her idea. "I mean really how long can this last, and then we can all get home."

Bucky sucked air past his teeth and looked over at Steve, the two sharing a silent conversation.

"What?" she asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them. "What am I missing?"

After a bit more silent conversing, Bucky was the one elected to explain to Darcy. "Our problems won't end with the storm kitten. It's only been coming down for a couple hours and there's probably already a foot and a half of snow on the ground and that's only going to get much much worse. We're miles from the main road, and no one is going to be coming back here to plow it out so we can drive out of here, and none of us have the proper gear to hike out."

Bucky and Steve shared another glance, the rest of that story was that one of them might stand half of chance to making it to civilization, but unless the situation was absolutely dire, Darcy would never let one of them go off on their own, and they would certainly never leave her behind alone either.

"Well, fuck."

"You said that before."

"Still seems relevant," Darcy replied shooting Steve a look. "So you're telling me that we're stuck here until we get rescued." She paused for one long beat. "But we will get rescued. You're Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to come looking for you. And I'm Tony's assistant, he's going to come looking for me as soon as someone tries to hand him something."

The men shared another loaded look, which made Darcy roll her eyes at being left out of the loop. "Just tell me," she sighed.

"Well barring a call to Assemble, we're on leave from S.H.I.E.L.D. until after new years," Bucky reminded her.

"And didn't Tony mention something about taking Pepper to Anguilla for the holidays? Steve added. "And I don't think we actually told anyoneexactly where we would be, since we didn't know exactly where we would be."

"Grant knows where we are," Darcy sighed heavily again. "But he's off on Coulson's super team doing god knows what, god knows where."

"Yep."

"Our cells-"

"Get no service up here, even your suped up Stark phone," Steve said, following her train of thought since he'd already traveled that same path before she'd woken up. "They won't be able to track the GPS if it's not connecting to anything."

All three of them fell silent, meditating over their respective cups of coffee.

"Ya know," Darcy exclaimed, bringing both men's attention back to her. "I have an excuse. I'm a college drop out who fell into the crazy world by chance. You two are highly trained soldiers who have way more survival training than I do. How did you let me get us into this mess so unprepared?!"

Bucky opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again before turning to look at Steve, who was already looking back at him with a matching expression. She was right, they really should have been more prepared for any kind of emergency scenario but they had gotten complacent, thinking nothing could go wrong on a little weekend getaway.

Steve didn't have a good answer for her, so he didn't even try. "You were right about what you said before Darce," he said reassuringly. "We'll definitely be missed when we don't come back home, so all we can do for now is sit tight and wait."

"Riiiight," Darcy drawled. "So when we end up resorting to cannibalism. Don't eat my face. That would be creepy and crossing the line."

* * *

A/N So this one is a bit more transitory, but I hope it was entertaining nonetheless. I will see you all again in another couple of days with the next one, so in the mean time... Let me know what you think!


	3. Day 7

A/N So those of you who have been following me on tumblr for over a year might remember something that resembles this chapter from last year about this time. Written for a tropes prompt this is the chapter that actually inspired the rest of the story... of course it's changed quite a bit since then, so hopefully even if you read it last year it still feels fresh :)

As with the rest of the story it's unbetaed so please let me know about any embarrassing typos and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"I'm sooooo bored!" Darcy suddenly exclaimed from her spot on the floor, where she and Bucky were laying in front of the fireplace, the former using the latter's stomach as a pillow.

Steve, who was stretched out on the sofa, looked up from the copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he was reading, looking almost grateful for the interruption. Bucky had found the book underneath the bed in one of the bedrooms on day three, abandoned by one of the cabin's previous occupants. Darcy and Bucky had already read it and seemed to enjoy it well enough, so he was giving it a shot as well, despite both of their warnings that he wouldn't like it. They were right, he wasn't enjoying it in the slightest, but stubbornly didn't want to admit it.

"I never thought it was possible to actually die of boredom, but it's going to happen," she continued to whine dramatically. "I'm just going to dissolve into a puddle of bored goo. And someday you'll turn to each other and say, 'hey remember Darcy?' 'Yeah I miss her, but it was really weird how she liquefied like that.'"

Their fun weekend getaway in the mountains had now stretched into day seven, and cabin fever had most definitely started to set in. Only made worse by the fact that there was no light at the end of the tunnel, as the storm of the century continued to rage outside. At least that's what they were calling it on the radio the night before, before the last of the batteries gave up the ghost, cutting them off from even that last bit of rudimentary contact with the outside world.

"We could play another game?" Steve offered. "Since I'd hate to have to explain a Darcy puddle to your parents."

The only other thing that the cabin had in abundance besides firewood and food was a closet full of board games. He remembered the perplexed expression on Darcy's face when she had found them during her initial exploration of the cabin. It seemed like in incongruous thing to find in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house, since she couldn't envision most of the agents she knew sitting around playing Yahtzee. But he had reminded her that those same agents probably felt the same about the Avengers biweekly movie night, and added that if anyone had to stay in the safe house for any extended period of time, they were sure to get some use out the games. Looking back, Steve wished he could go back and eat those prophetic words, because they were all certainly grateful that they existed now.

"Only if its something all three of us can play and we turn it into the strip version," Bucky interjected into the conversation, coming out of the semi trance he was in from watching the fire flicker.

Darcy rolled her eyes. "You want to turn everything into the strip version," she scoffed.

"Hey! I think Strip Clue turned out pretty well last time," Bucky replied.

"Sure, except for the fact that you cheat at Clue!" she retorted.

Offended, Bucky huffed with righteous indignation, making her head bounce from where it was resting on his belly. "I do not cheat at Clue!"

"Ummm, yeah, you do," she insisted, not backing down. "You also cheat at battleship."

"You're just bitter that you ended up naked first." He waved a hand through the air dismissively. "Have you ever seen me cheat?"

"I am not bitter about being naked," she snapped, sitting up and twisting around so that she could see his face. "I'm bitter that you're a cheater. And you're a super spy, you would be a pretty crappy one for me to catch you cheating. But just because I can't see it doesn't mean I don't know its happening. You're like the wind of cheating. Wind cheater."

"What?!" Bucky exclaimed as he too sat up. "That doesn't even make sense!"

Steve watched their bickering devolve and knew it was time to step in before it became a real argument. The stress of being cooped up was wearing on all of them and he was aware of how quickly things could escalate. And while didn't truly fight very often, when they did, they fought epically and quite frankly the cabin was not large enough for him to be stuck between the two of them.

"We could play Risk?" Steve suggested hopefully.

"No!" Darcy and Bucky exclaimed simultaneously, forgetting their argument as they both snapped their heads over to where Steve was on the sofa.

Steve sighed, and tried not to pout, after the first game they refused to ever play again. He couldn't help it that he was almost preternaturally good at the strategy game. It was literally what he was built for. But at least they weren't squabbling with each other anymore, which was his intention in the first place.

"What about Pictionary?" Darcy suggested as an alternative, Steve perking back up at that idea.

"Nah," Bucky shook his head. "It doesn't work right with only three people and Steve is the only one who can actually draw."

"I can draw," Darcy frowned. "Kinda."

"No, you can't," Bucky snorted. "The word was vegetable and you drew a duck wearing a party hat."

"It was a squash!" she said defensively. "Steve, you could tell it was a squash couldn't you?"

The look on Steve's face clearly said that he did not want to be put in the middle of this, he did not just defuse one argument to be dragged into a different one. "It did look a little duck like," he admitted with a cringe.

"Fine," she crossed her arms over her chest sulkily. "I clearly failed ninth grade art class."

"We could always play Trouble again," Bucky suggested as a peace offering, remembering that Darcy had enjoyed that game last time.

"Yeah, except Mr. Super Solider over there got a little over excited the last time we played and popped the popper so hard that it popped its last pop," she said not losing her pout.

"We could use a regular a regular die from another game?" Steve offered, chagrined. Really though, he thought that Hasbro's shoddy craftsmanship was more at fault than his enthusiastic game play.

"It's okay, the poppy-thingy is what makes it fun," Darcy sighed. "What about Trivial Pursuit?" she suggested, brightening at that idea.

"No." This time is was Steve and Bucky's turn to simultaneously shoot down that idea.

"Oh come on, I think it's a good leaning tool," she cajoled with what she hoped was a winning smile. "It shows where your pop culture education has been lacking, so you can both learn and grow as men of the twenty-first century."

"No." They both said again.

"We could break out the Ouija board?" Bucky suggested. "At least it's something we haven't done yet."

"Absolutely not," Darcy replied immediately. "I already told you I'm not about to become the star of a bad horror movie. I mean really, three attractive twenty-somethings trapped in a cabin in the woods. Accidently summon a demon using a children's game, which then toys with them for days before finally killing them in some horrific manner. I'm telling you, demons don't give a shit if you a superhero or not. And we've all had sex which automatically means there would be no survivors."

"What about Monopoly?" Steve said, chuckling at Darcy's vehement refusal to even take the Ouija Board out of the closet. Personally, he had no desire to play with the séance board either, but more because he just didn't believe in it, rather than the idea that they would all die a horrible death from summoning a demon from the depths of hell.

Bucky shook his head, "I don't think we found all the pieces after Darcy flipped the board over last time we tried to play."

Darcy just shrugged and flopped back down, her head landing in Bucky's lap, there was no point in denying it. "Monopoly doesn't bring out my best qualities."

"We could bring the cards out again," Bucky offered up. "Play some poker?"

"You just want to make it strip poker and no, because again, you cheat," Darcy replied looking up at him, a smirk playing at the corners of her lips.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to react to all these heinous accusations against my moral character," Bucky sniffed with over exaggerated offense, all the earlier tension on the subject forgotten.

"Then maybe you should stop cheating," Steve suggested dryly, a wry sort of half smile forming when Darcy burst out laughing.

"Et tu, Steven?" Bucky gasped theatrically, clutching a hand to his chest.

"I've got it!" Darcy exclaimed suddenly, popping to her feet and running from the room so fast she managed to startle both men, not that either of them would ever admit it.

Steve looked over at Bucky who just shrugged and shook his head to say that he had no idea what Darcy was up to either. But they only had to wait a moment before Darcy came skidding back into the room with a box hidden behind her back. After she let what she felt to be the appropriate amount of suspense fill, she brought the box out from behind her with a flourish.

"Twister!"

Neither man responded immediately, leading Darcy to shake the box and give them a look that clearly translated to _well?!_

"Can it be Strip Twister?" Bucky proposed hopefully.

Darcy shared a quick look with Steve. "Yes, yes it can."

"Let's play!"

* * *

A/N And there we have it! I hope you all enjoyed and I'll see you all again in a couple of days :) Let me know what you think!


	4. Day 10

A/N Once again I'm getting this up later than I promised, I should probably just stop predicting when I'm going to post, but it's only two days late so I guess that's not too bad... As always with this story this is hot off the presses and unbeta-ed and it's almost three in the morning as I'm writing this so let me know about any terrible typos...

* * *

Day ten of their now involuntary mountain getaway hadn't even officially dawned, but as Darcy woke, she was only aware of one thing. That she was _freezing_! Before she was even fully conscious she was burrowing deeper between the two warm bodies she was tucked between. Her knees pulled up, her feet finding warmth against Steve's shins, as her hands slid underneath Bucky's t-shirt on a similar heat seeking mission.

"Jesus Darce!" Bucky exclaimed, his voice thick with sleep as he was jolted from his sleep by her icy hands running up his back. "Your hands are fucking freezing!"

"Her feet are just as bad," Steve commiserated sleepily, not even opening his eyes.

"It's not my fault, it's like negative ten degrees in here!" Darcy replied defensively through chattering teeth, even as she removed her offending body parts from their persons in exchange for pulling the blankets over her head. "Someone go turn the heater up! But don't let any of the warm air out when you get out of bed."

The men shared a look over the lump that answered to Darcy before Bucky sighed and carefully slid out from beneath the covers, watching with amused eyes as said lump wiggled under the blankets in Steve's direction, the slight grimace on the blonde's face telling him that she had glomphed on with all of her icy appendages. Chuckling low in his throat, Bucky threw a sweatshirt over his head and left to investigate why the heater wasn't doing its job.

"How are you still so warm?" Darcy asked a few minutes later, as she did her best to absorb the warmth he was radiating despite the frigid temperature of the room.

"You know I always run hot," he replied, wrapping his arms tighter around her.

"I know," she said into his shirt. "And I'm so grateful for it right now that I promise that I'll never bitch about waking up hot and sweaty with a Steve blanket during the summer again."

Steve chuckled, not believing that in slightest. "I'll be sure to remind you come July."

"You do that," she said through clenched teeth, trying to stop her chattering. "I feel like I'll never be warm ever again."

He rubbed her back, hoping the friction would help warm her up, feeling bad that she was so miserable. He knew the room was more than uncomfortably cold, he would even say that he himself was chilled, but one of the many perks to being a super solider was that he was built to withstand far more extreme temperatures than the normal person. That hadn't always been the case though.

"I know how you feel," Steve said sympathetically. "Growing up I felt like I spent October to March with my teeth chattering. And my circulation was so bad that even during the hottest days of summer my hands and feet were still clammy and cold."

"Thank god that's not a problem anymore," she replied burrowing even deeper into his embrace. "You're like snuggling with a hot water bottle. It's amazing."

"I'm glad I have my uses," he said with a good-natured roll of his eyes.

"I've got bad news," Bucky announced as he reentered the room. "The heater's out of oil, so no more central heat."

From beneath the comforter Darcy made a noise that could only be liked to an injured moose.

"But," Bucky continued, "I got the fire going in the living room so it's already starting to warm up out there. I figure we can move the mattress out there and just camp out on the floor so we can rack out for a couple more hours.

"That means I have to get up, doesn't it," Darcy said her voice muffled as she was still buried beneath the blankets.

"Not necessarily," Bucky said crossing over to the bed.

"But how- _eeeep!_" Darcy squeaked in surprise when she was suddenly lifted from the bed, covers and all, wrapped up tight in three different layers of blankets and tossed over Bucky's shoulder. "You could warn a girl first!" she exclaimed in protest the rough handling.

"Well where would be the fun in that?" Bucky laughed. He dropped her onto the sofa with a bounce, watching for a moment as she tried to claw her way out of the tangle of blankets, before going back to help Steve wrestle the mattress through the doorway.

By the time the men had managed to get the mattress out of the bedroom and around the two tight corners to the living room, Darcy had managed to find a hole through which to stick her face through, but she had seemed to stop there. Bucky just wasn't sure if it was by choice, or she couldn't untangle herself any further and just gave up.

"Well would you look at that," Bucky said to Steve as they situated the mattress in front of the fire and started remaking the bed. "Isn't that the most pathetic lookin' burrito you've ever seen?"

A look of concentration settled over Darcy's face as she started wiggling within her blanket cocoon, soft grunts escaping her throat as she struggled. Both Bucky and Steve stopped to watch and wait to see what was worth all that effort. The big reveal they were waiting for turned out to be a single middle finger slowly emerging through the hole she had made for her face. Steve was the first to start laughing, but Bucky wasn't far behind.

"Put that thing away Dollface unless you're going to use it," Bucky said through his laughter.

Darcy just rolled her eyes and let her other middle finger out to join the first, making the boys laugh harder.

"Whatever," she finally said. "Just finish making up the bed and then unwrap me so we can all go back to sleep for a couple hours. Now that I've finally thawed out, I'm sleepy."

"Anything for you sweetheart," Steve said, still chuckling.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"We're starting to run low on wood," Bucky announced later that afternoon as he threw a log into the fireplace and expertly stoked the fire back up to roaring status. "Someone is going to have to go outside to the shed to bring more in now, since it's probably going to need some time to dry out before we can use it." When he didn't get a response from either of the individuals who were snuggled under a blanket on the sofa behind him, he turned around questioningly.

"Don't look at me!" Darcy exclaimed with a laugh. "Do you really think I'm going to volunteer to go out in this? _Said the girl who grew up in New Mexico_."

Bucky turned his gaze to Steve.

"I have a really bad track record when it comes to these sorts of things," Steve said guilelessly. "I don't think I could handle having to adjust to the 22nd century when I've just gotten used to this one."

Darcy snorted, slapping her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. "Oh come on, Mister Winter Soldier," she said, once she was able to speak again. "Isn't this just what they call Tuesday in Russia?"

"You do seem to be the most experienced and qualified man for the job," Steve agreed.

"I hate you both," Bucky scoffed in disgust before stomping off to the bedroom to get his coat and boots.

Darcy couldn't resist a parting shot as the door slammed. "That's not what you said last night!"

Digging through the woodpile, moving aside the thoroughly saturated top logs to get to the drier wood underneath, Bucky was muttering to himself that at least there was currently a lull in the storm. Now that the wind had died down he could see a whole ten feet in front of him instead of just two. He was piling the good firewood into a box, when the crunching of snow behind him had him whipping around, the ax that had been left behind the last time someone chopped wood finding its way into his hands.

"Whoa there tiger!" Darcy exclaimed her hands up in front of her. "We come in peace."

"Sorry, old habits," Bucky shrugged, lowering the ax. "What are you two doing out here?"

"We felt bad-"

"_Steve_ felt bad," Darcy felt the need to interject.

Steve continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "- so we're here to help."

"_Steve's_ here to help," she corrected again, wrapping her arms around herself and bouncing on her toes in a futile effort to ward off the cold.

"Well if you didn't feel bad and you're not here to help what are you doing out here kitten?" Bucky questioned, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

"To play Sherpa obviously," Darcy retorted as if it should have been apparent. "After you left, it was discussed that you _also_ have a history of doing hard time frozen solid and since I'm the only one out of the three of us that isn't a card carrying member of the deep freeze club, I clearly need to watch you two."

"The cabin is _maybe_ fifteen yards that way," Bucky replied pointing back towards the structure. "We're not climbing Everest."

"Yeah and can you actually _see_ the cabin from here?" she asked pointedly. "Because I can't. It's hard trudging through all this snow, what if the wind picks back up halfway back when you can't see the shed or the cabin and you manage to get turned off course. Then it wouldn't matter if it was fifteen yards or fifteen hundred."

"You make a valid point," Bucky conceded. "But how is little Miss I-grew-up-in-the-desert going to solve that problem?" he challenged.

With a smug grin, Darcy held up the ball of twine that she had tucked under her arm.

"She tied the end of it off to the back door, so we can just follow the line back," Steve explained. "I thought it was pretty clever myself."

Bucky agreed and told her so. It was such a simple concept, but very effective and he could admit that it wouldn't have occurred to.

"And that's why I'm the Sherpa and you two are the pack mules," she stated plainly. "So stop jabbering, grab as much wood as you can carry, and let's get. I can't feel my face."

* * *

A/N And there it is... only two more chapters after this one! Let me know what you think, and if you celebrate it, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a Merry Christmas!


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